Honestly I like that fact that there are things that open up new paths and things that increase the power on what you have. If ballistics and lasers were perfect mirrors of each other it would be boring. That said I'd like to see newer techs cost difference be a bit higher so that it's not something you put on all your ships until you can afford it. Possibly even affect construction and upkeep costs not just money. Maybe it's just my play style but most of new ships are bleeding edge and I think it'd be neat to see a reason to stick with tried and true techs just a little longer. It would also be an anti-snowball effect since better more advanced fleets would cost more compared to the cheap ones a tech lagged player would use.

Such a setup may require a bit more economic progression and certainly shouldn't eliminate things that are just better. VRF Acceleration and Quantum Capacitors are good examples of getting just plain better.

red1939 wrote:... I'm also not very impressed with the pallet-swapping of some techs (especially shield tree) ...

Really? Shields? They aren't exactly something that you can avoid pallet-swapping with. Do you think they should have contrived some reason for Meson Shields to be square? There's really not a whole lot of different things you can do with them. And for what it's worth, Kerberos has already done a good job on that front, considering deflectors and shield projectors.